Culture

Letter U, as well as the combination Uբ. are the abbreviations of the word Սուրբ ([surb] – Saint). This abbreviation is placed before the names of the Armenian saints and in the names of the Armenian churches:

Talking about the issue of similar letters, in particular Ջ and Զ, scholar Ruben Taroumyan wrote: “We must make sure that letters with a similar shape (Ջ and Զ, շ and չ, etc.) are sufficiently different from each other.

This letter signifies the beginning of the thousands’ row: after it, the value of each letter successively increased by one thousand. It is interesting that while the Armenian Ռ opens the row of thousands, the Latin R is less lucky.

Andrey Bitov, a writer who traveled in Armenia, has mentioned in his book “Lessons of Armenia”: “I do not know why, but everywhere – on the streets, in shops and buses – I hear the word “che” more often than the word "ayo" (yes ). Che, che, che”...

In Grabar, Ո denoted sound [o]. In modern Armenian, at the beginning and in the middle of words, after a vowel, it is pronounced as [vo] (exceptions: ով ([ov] – who), ովքեր ([ovqher] – who) in the plural, Ովսաննա – Ovsanna, where Ո preserves the ancient pronunciation), in all other words, in this position – [o].

Talking about letter Շ, we cannot but recall the famous poem by the Armenian poet Vahan Terian “Շշուկ ու շրշյուն” ([shshuk u shrshyun] – "Whisper and Rustle"). Even without knowing the Armenian language, the repeated utterance of the sound [sh] makes you hear the rustle of leaves and steps that create the image of the autumn.

The prototype of the graphic form of the Armenian letter Ն is the Greek “nu” – not the classical N, but one of its varieties. But it is not possible to determine, which variant exactly was used by Mashtots, because there were numerous variations of Ն in the IV–V centuries.

Letter Յ denotes the sound [y]. At first, its phonetic meaning was confined to this, but with the lapse of time it changed. Apparently, no later than the XIII century, letter Յ got to be pronounced as [h] at the beginning of words.